NATO needs more than money to solve its Russia problem

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a figure associated with a congressional mandate. We regret the error.

Donald Trump knew what he was doing with his threat not to defend NATO if the alliance refused to spend more on defense, asserting he would tell Russia they “can do whatever the hell they want.”  

On both sides of the Atlantic, a double-figure reaction on the political Richter scale was triggered. NATO officials pressed allies that were not meeting the 2 percent of GDP commitment to defense to do so.

But reality must intervene. Counterintuitively, the more that is spent on defense, certainly in the U.S. and United Kingdom, the more their forces have shrunk. The reasons lie in the cost growth of every item from people to precision weapons and even pencils. That annual uncontrolled real cost growth for NATO states, depending on the country, runs between 3-7 percent. Add inflation and the problem worsens.

In the U.S., its Navy is struggling to reach 300 ships, 55 short of the number set by Congress. The Department of Defense faces dramatic recruiting shortfalls. The British Army is just over 72,000 and will be cut to 148 tanks. And the Royal Navy that once ruled the seas now can only manage 16 destroyers and frigates.

Of course those NATO members not honoring the 2 percent commitment must do so. However, that will not solve the problem. In reading NATO’s warfighting concept, its six “outs” — to “out-think,” “out-excel,” “out-fight,” “out-pace,” “out-partner” and “out-last” — the adversary are purposely aspirational, ignoring the strategy, forces and budgets needed to stop and defeat a Russian attack.

One logical conclusion is that before taking out its checkbooks, NATO leaders might produce a no-nonsense strategy with key objectives. The first is to construct an affordable force able to defeat Russian military aggression. To accomplish that, the strategy must recognize and integrate the harsh realities and constraints that are presently ignored due to the incorrect belief that more spending by itself is the answer. It is not.

Among these realities must be a fuller understanding of the capabilities and limitations confronting Russia. If reports are accurate, Russia has taken towering losses in personnel and equipment in Ukraine. While Russia is bolstering its defense industrial base and has a sizable population of about 140 million to recruit from, it now has a “hollow military” that cannot be sent into action beyond Ukraine.

The U.S. took a decade and a half for its military to recover from Vietnam. Some in NATO predict Russia could attack NATO in a few years. But be careful. No matter how the war in Ukraine ends, unlike Afghanistan and Iraq when the U.S. could bring its forces home, Russia cannot totally withdraw. A substantial number will be left behind either to wage a guerrilla war or to occupy parts of Ukraine and Crimea.

NATO must also recognize the strategic advantage membership of Finland and presumably Sweden brings. Russia must now protect its 830-mile border with Finland. And Sweden, from the Russian perspective, is a dagger pointed at Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg in the Baltic.  

In the early 1960’s the Kennedy administration’s “flexible response” doctrine required military capabilities for virtually all levels of conflict from insurgencies to nuclear war.  In following suit, NATO produced the Harmel Report named after Belgium’s foreign minister. 

Regardless of the name’s origins, NATO needs a new Harmel Report to assess the heightened Russian threat, the war in Ukraine and its aftermath. Iran, North Korea and China must also be considered. For example, if the U.S. and China went to war over Taiwan and the continental U.S. were attacked by China, would Article 5 be invoked as it was after 9/11?

The role of technology in the Ukraine war must be integrated, from the use of drones and Starlink satellite internet for communications to dazzlingly shortened timeframes to field new types of weapons. All this should be incorporated in a “porcupine defense” that would raise the costs of any Russian attack on NATO to make it unacceptable. Designed correctly, this defense would not necessarily need more spending, just redirecting where the money would go.

This will not be easy given the current intense bureaucratic, political and economic resistance. But make no mistake. Without a new strategy, more NATO spending is not the solution.

Harlan Ullman is a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. He spent 12 years on the advisory board of a series of supreme allied commanders, Europe. His 12th book is “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD:  How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.” He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.